Whenever a groundbreaking post-punk band reforms to release new material, there’s the inevitable tendency to compare it to their earliest, trailblazing efforts. In the best-case scenario– say, Mission of Burma or Wire– we may marvel that artists in their fifties muster the same intensity as their twentysomething selves. But for the recently reunited Feelies, such considerations don’t apply. The Feelies’ 1980 debut, Crazy Rhythms, is undoubtedly their most revered record, but it’s also the outlier in their discography, a singular and still exhilarating blur of minimalist guitar jabbing and percussive propulsion that the band would never try to recapture again. When Crazy Rhythms’ follow-up, The Good Earth, appeared six long years later, the Feelies were a very different band both in terms of personnel and purpose. By then, they’d swapped out their rhythm section and tempered their debut’s hypno-rock clatter into a more relaxed, jangly groove that they would ride out for two more albums before disbanding in 1991.
It’s this second-wave iteration of the Feelies that resurfaced in 2008. And though the band acknowledged Crazy Rhythms’ 30th anniversary by reissuing the album and performing it in its entirety at the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival, the experience has had little rub-off effect on Here Before. Rather than try to reconnect with their formative inspirations, the Feelies sound remarkably comfortable in the middle-aged skin on Here Before, which exudes the casual grace of old friends who greatly enjoy playing together and have long stopped caring about proving themselves to anyone. Here, the Feelies simply dig up The Good Earth’s pastoral, post-Velvets power-pop– a sound that ruled college radio airwaves in the mid-80s but which boasts few notable contemporary adherents– and blissfully strum away as if they were performing in hammocks. And there’s good reason to believe that, if we were to pay them a visit in another 20 years, they’d still be doing the exact same thing.
Despite the myriad, knowing references to “start[ing] again” and “do[ing] it some more,” there’s little sense of a band striving to make the most of a new opportunity to be heard, or trying to prove their relevance to a younger generation. The nerviest track here, “Time Is Right”, seems to mock this very idea, with Glenn Mercer sardonically declaring, “Gotta do something/ Get in with the crowd.” But even if the Feelies aren’t exactly challenging themselves on Here Before, they still prove themselves masters of arrangement, strategically positioning key elements to give these seemingly simple songs a greater dynamic impact. Examples include the glorious guitar solo that pushes the accelerator on “Should Be Gone”, the stop/start snare-drum triggers on “Later On”, or the strange, swirling static in “When You Know” that marks a rare moment of discord in these otherwise serene surroundings. Perhaps the most sublime turn on the entire album comes deep into the deceptively downcast title track, which blossoms suddenly into a swooning chorus at the 2:40 mark and venerates the moment by featuring it only once. And in that instance you realize why the Feelies are still necessary in totally wired 2011: to reassert the virtue of patience.
— Stuart Berman, April 12, 2011